Module content and teaching

Principal aims

Advanced Research Methods I, II and III are usually taken together as one 90 CAT group.These three interrelated modules strengthen understanding of the interconnected layers of educational research. Each module progressively develops understanding within and between each stream of research training: the nature of research enquiry encourages analysis of the epistemological and theoretical issues underlying enquiry and their relationship to problem formulation, research design and strategy; qualitative research methods develops understanding of a range of subject-specific research strategies including discourse analysis, ethnography, action research and experimental methods; quantitative research methods develops knowledge of sampling, problems of error and bias, assessing the validity of data, as well as interpretation of results. Methodological issues and statistical techniques will be introduced through discussion of research papers and the statistical package SPSS.The importance of interconnecting qualitative and quantitative methods will be addressed in each module.